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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Brief Asides #3

Here are some quick, brief asides (hence the title of this monthly column within a blog) about this or that topic, to close out the lovely month of March...

I've been really enjoying Bosch on Amazon Prime. Based on the cop novels by Michael Connelly, this is a terrific crime series that doesn't worry about being totally original and just happily embraces the conventions of the cop show and really runs with them. I'll write more fully about the show when I finish watching all ten episodes, but for now let me send out a broad recommendation.

We recently caught the new live-action Cinderella at the movies. It's, well... Cinderella. In other words, if you know the story you've pretty much seen the movie. But it's beautifully shot and acted, an extra bit of palace intrigue is added to make things a little more compelling for adults, and in the end it's generally a lush, moving piece of film making. If you're at all in the mood for this sort of thing, you won't go away disappointed.

Run All Night, Liam Neeson's latest shoot 'em up, is a pretty good thriller, no more and no less. I did appreciate the "R" rating, though. I hate when movies that cry out for adults-only style action, violence, and language are toned down so they can sell more tickets to the kids. Happily, that's not the case here. This is a nice gritty movie.

I'm now working my way through a bunch of graphic novels that collect DC Comics' Suicide Squad comic book stories. The Suicide Squad is a group comprised of captured super-villains who, in exchange for time off their jail sentences, are asked to perform impossibly dangerous missions that no one else wants to do. It's a fun, bracing series that manages to deepen the characterizations and motivations of characters usually portrayed as purely evil, one-note villains, but while still keeping them, well... villainous.. Lots of good action and black humor here.

There's actually a Suicide Squad movie on the way. Though an "R" rating is probably too much to ask for, the film better be, at the very least, a hard "PG-13". Toning down the violence and villainy too much will be fatal to a successful adaptation process. I mean, if they're gonna do the Suicide Squad, with its assassins, murderers, and psychopaths, then they should do the Suicide Squad. Get it?

Season five of The Walking Dead just concluded on AMC. I thought it was a pretty solid season, with a nice balance of scares and subtlety. It kind of felt like a big novel, one about whether people so used to living a hardscrabble, impossibly dangerous existence out in the wild can reintegrate into a civilized situation. The answer? To be continued next season!